Jadunath Sarkar

"Sir Jadunath Sarkars History of Aurangzeb ... has rightly earned him the position of the doyen of Indian historians.... Sarkar has been a source of inspiration for hundreds of scholars.... His History of Aurangzeb is almost a classic."

"Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies."

"On 2nd April, 1679, the jazia or polltax on non-Muslims was revived. The poor people who appealed to the Emperor and blocked a road abjectly crying for its remission, were trampled down by elephants at his order and dispersed.”"

"The Historian of Shivaji at the end of a careful study of all the records about him in eight different languages, is bound to admit that Shivaji was not only the maker of the Maratha nation, but also the greatest constructive genius of medieval India . States fall, empires break up, dynasties become extinct, but the memory of a true “hero as King” like Shivaji remains an imperishable historical legacy for the entire human race. – The pillar of people’s hope. The center of a world’s desire, to animate the heart, to kindle the imagination, and to inspire the brain of succeeding ages to the highest endeavors."

"Sir Jadunath Sarkars Aurangzib was avidly read, and also criticised. But those were the days of a different culture not found now among Marxists and progressives. For instance, when there was criticism of some statement of Jadunath Sarkar, it was also acknowledged in and outside the class room (by R.P. Tripathi, for example) that Sarkar was the doyen of Indian historians and "head and shoulders above all of us"."

"Naturally, Jadunath Sarkar began to earn the ire of his contemporary academics at a time when the field of historical research was slowly beginning to acquire ideological tinges. Thus, this ire, in the hands of such ideological scholars turned into vicious enmity and single-minded witch hunt. Perhaps the definitive reason for this was Sarkar’s no-holds-barred expose of Aurangzeb in his majestic, History of Aurangzib in five volumes....The subsequent generations of historians and scholars—trained under them— carried forward this slander. Among other big names, this calumnious campaign was led by Irfan Habib, son of the same Muhammad Habib. In his scholarly work titled Agrarian System of Mughal India, Irfan Habib wrote about this subject without any reference to Sarkar’s work as if Sarkar’s volumes did not exist. Irfan Habib calculatedly chose only such themes which allowed him to reject Sarkar’s sources. The result was that he succeeded in breaking Sarkar’s image as a towering historical scholar. Which is consistent with Habib’s credentials as an avowed Marxist as we shall see. With this move, Habib killed two birds with one stone: he deflected attention away from Aurangzeb’s legendary cruelty and Islamic bigotry by presenting the fall of Mughals as rooted in a mere “revenue crisis of the Empire!”"